Learning English through Painting in the Renaissance

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Learning English through Painting in the
Renaissance
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The Renaissance

• In the Low Countries

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Jan Van Eyck The Arnolfini Marriage
1434The National Gallery, London

• This painting reveals to us the inner meaning of
  a true marriage.

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The Arnolfini Marriage 1434

• Despite the restricted space husband and wife
  are surrounded with a host of symbols. To the
  left, the oranges are a reminder of an original
  innocence, of an age before sin. Above the
  couple's heads, the candle that has been left
  burning in broad daylight can be interpreted as
  the nuptial flame, or as the eye of God. The
  small dog is an emblem of fidelity and love.
  Meanwhile, the marriage bed with its bright red
  curtains evokes the physical act of love which,
  according to Christian doctrine, is an essential
  part of the perfect union of man and wife.
• The mirror is the focal point of the whole
  composition. It has often been noted that two
  tiny figures can be seen reflected in it, their
  image captured as they cross the threshold of the
  room. They are the painter himself and a young
  man, doubtless arriving to act as witnesses to
  the marriage. The essential point is the fact
  that the convex mirror is able to absorb and
  reflect in a single image both the floor and the
  ceiling of the room, as well as the sky and the
  garden outside, both of which are otherwise
  barely visible through the side window. The
  mirror thus acts as a sort of hole in the texture
  of space.

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Jan Van Eyck The Virgin of Chancellor Rolin
1435Musée du Louvre, Paris
This painting represents a comprehensive vision
of the entire universe.
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The Virgin of Chancellor Rolin 1435

• Nicolas Rolin, Philip the Good's right-hand
  man, still fascinates with the sense of energy
  and will-power which it projects. His gaze is
  pensive, looking as though he has just raised his
  eyes from his book of hours.
• On the right is the seated figure of the Virgin.
  Wrapped in a voluminous red robe, she is
  presenting the Infant Jesus to the chancellor
  while a hovering angel holds a magnificent crown
  above her head. The figures have been brought
  together in the loggia of an Italianate palace.
  The three arches give first onto a small garden
  with lilies and roses symbolizing Mary's virtues.
  Slightly farther back are two small figures, near
  them are two peacocks, symbols of immortality,
  but perhaps also of the pride to which such a
  powerful man as Chancellor Rolin might well
  succumb.
• The humbler areas of the town that stretched
  beyond the loggia lie to the left, behind
  Chancellor Rolin. On the right, behind the
  Virgin, are the wealthy quarters, with a
  profusion of buildings, dominated by an imposing
  Gothic church. Countless tiny figures are
  flocking towards this part of town, across the
  bridge and through the roads and squares.
  Meanwhile on the river, boats are arriving and
  putting into shore. It is as if all mankind,
  united by faith, were travelling in pilgrimage
  towards this city and its cathedral.

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Hugo Van der Goes The Monforte Altarpiece c.
1470Staatliche Museum, Berlin
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The Monforte Altarpiece

• Named after the town in which it was housed, in
  a college belonging to a group of Spanish
  Jesuits. The theme of the surviving picture is
  the adoration of the Magi.
• The figures are all shown on the same scale,
  whether humble or magnificent. In the foreground,
  symbolic flowers - the lily and columbine - and a
  pottery vessel are depicted with great care,
  deploying the splendidly rich colours that are so
  characteristic of Van der Goess art, mixing
  blazing reds with the most delicately nuanced
  shades.

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Rogier Van der Weyden The Great Deposition
c. 1435Museo del Prado, Madrid
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The Great Deposition

• Rogier gives the characters the
  three-dimensionality of statues but the look of a
  painting, which is much more life-like than
  sculpture. The figures are related to each other
  in a masterly composition, Mary, the Mother of
  God, sinking to the ground as if dead, forms a
  parallel to Christ. The Magdalene's figure closes
  off the picture on the right like a large
  bracket, matching the similarly bowed figure of
  John on the left. Overlapping forms and lines
  determine the structure of the whole picture.

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Pieter Bruegel the Elder Childrens Games
1554Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
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Childrens Games

• The painting is referred to as the
  "encyclopaedia of Flemish children's games". It
  represents about 84 games some of them are
  practiced until present days. There is also an
  assumption that the painting is part of a
  four-piece cycle representing the four seasons.
• In addition to the games in the left part of the
  background a typical Flemish landscape, while on
  the right a street with excellent perspective can
  be seen.

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Pieter Bruegel the Elder The Sermon of St
John the Baptist (detail) 1566 Museum of Fine
Arts, Budapest
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The Sermon of St John the Baptist

• The exotic figures are not the result of
  fantasy, in 16th century Antwerp merchants,
  bankers and shipmen from all over the world
  stayed for shorter or longer periods.

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Hieronymus Bosch The Garden of Earthly
Delights c.1500Museo del Prado, Madrid
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The Garden of Earthly Delights

• This large triptych depicts the history of the
  world and the progression of sin. Beginning on
  the outside shutters with the creation of the
  world, the story progresses from Adam and Eve and
  original sin on the left panel to the torments of
  hell, a dark, icy, yet fiery nightmarish vision,
  on the right. The Garden of Delights in the
  centre, filled with cavorting nudes and giant
  birds and fruit, illustrates a world deeply
  engaged in sinful pleasures.
• Various attempts have been made to relate
  Boschs enigmatic and strange fantasies to the
  realities of his own day. The most promising line
  has been to recognize many of them as
  illustrations of proverbs for instance, the pair
  of lovers in the glass bubble would recall the
  proverb 'Pleasure is as fragile as glass Bruegel
  also made illustrations of proverbs in this way
  though without Boschs satanic profusion.

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Jan Gossaert Young Girl with Astronomic
Instrument 1520National Gallery, London
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Young Girl with Astronomic Instrument

• The girl probably Jacqueline de Bourgogne - is
  represented with the "sphaera armillaris", an
  instrument showing the trajectory of the planets.
  By 1520 the Earth was still the centre of the
  Universe. Copernicuss On the Revolutions of the
  Celestial Orbs appeared in 1543.

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Jan Vermeer van Delft Officer with a Laughing
Girl c.1657Frick Collection, New York
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Officer with a Laughing Girl

• Vermeer ingeniously develops his mastery as a
  luminist. The young woman is bathed in light,
  which streams in through the half open window to
  the left. Her face, exceptionally conveying
  expression - joy and laughter - appears framed in
  a kerchief and the collar of her dress. That part
  of the figure, especially, reveals itself as a
  symphony of luminosity. In contrast, the soldier
  is hardly more than a silhouette, but rather
  overpowering.
• The nearest foreground - the soldier on his
  chair and the dark-green part of the table cover
  - are so strongly enhanced that the use of an
  optical instrument, the camera obscura, by
  Vermeer for the structuring of the composition
  seems indisputable. The effect is that of a
  photographic perspective. On the back of the
  wall, we find for the first time a map. This
  element of decoration reappears frequently in the
  artist's subsequent works.

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Jan Vermeer van Delft Girl with a Pearl
Earring 1665 Mauritshuis, The Hague
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Girl with a Pearl Earring

• This charming portrait of a girl is dubbed the
  "Gioconda of the North".
• The girl is seen against a neutral, dark
  background, very nearly black, which establishes
  a powerful three-dimensionality of effect. The
  girl is turning to gaze at us, and her lips are
  slightly parted, as if she were about to speak to
  us.
• The girl's headdress has an exotic effect.
  Turbans were a popular fashionable accessory in
  Europe as early as the 15th century. During the
  wars against the Turks, the remote way of life
  and foreign dress of the "enemy of Christendom"
  proved to be very fascinating.
• A particularly noticeable feature is the large,
  tear-shaped pearl. This jewel has a spiritual
  meaning, namely that the first part of the body
  that a man wants, and which a woman must loyally
  protect, is the ear no word or sound should
  enter it other than the sweet sound of chaste
  words, which are the oriental pearls of the
  gospel." The pearl in Vermeer's painting is a
  symbol of chastity.

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Gerard David Madonna with Child with the Milk
Soup 1520 Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels
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Madonna with Child with the Milk Soup

• The Child fed by the Virgin is a metaphor of the
  believer nourished by his mother the Church and
  by Christ himself. The bread at the front of the
  scene and the jug on the cupboard are the
  eucharistic symbols of his body and his blood.
  The very idea of Christ's incarnation through
  which humanity has been saved is evoked here.
• The picture is intended for private devotion. By
  handling the subject as a contemporary scene, the
  painter abolishes the frontier between the
  spiritual and the material worlds, calling on the
  believer to live his faith directly and
  individually.

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Hans Memling Angel Musicians (left panel)
1480sKoninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten,
Antwerp
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Angel Musicians (left panel)

• The picture shows one of the fragments of a
  religious polyptych by Memling, Christ Surrounded
  by Musician Angels. The carefully ordered and
  simple composition depicts Christ as Sovereign of
  the World, giving His blessing, with three
  singing angels on either side. The two other
  panels contain five angels playing musical
  instruments psaltery, tromba marina, lute,
  trumpet and oboe (left-hand panel), bassoon,
  trumpet, portative organ, harp and viol
  (right-hand panel). Heaven is suggested by the
  glowing clouds which run from the left across to
  the right-hand panel. These panels are fragments
  of a polyptych, now largely lost, which once
  stood on the high altar of the Benedictine church
  of Santa Maria la Real in Nájera, Spain.

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Hans Holbein The Ambassadors 1533National
Gallery, London
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The Ambassadors

• This huge panel is one of the earliest portraits
  combining two full-length figures on the scale of
  life. A paean to two scholar-diplomats and to the
  artist's virtuosity, it is on closer examination
  a reminder also of the brevity of life and of the
  vanity of human accomplishments. While life is
  short, art is long-lasting - but eternity endures
  for ever.
• On the what-not between them Holbein has
  depicted the wide range of their interests - a
  compendium of the culture of the age. On the top
  shelf, the minutely rendered Turkey' carpet
  bears a celestial globe and an array of
  astronomical and navigational instruments The
  cylindrical dial, the universal equinoctial dial,
  the polyhedral dial with a tiny compass, and a
  German text-book of Arithmetic for Merchants,
  propped open with a T-square.
• A lute and a case of recorders or flutes
  demonstrate the sitters' musical interests. But a
  string of the lute has snapped, a traditional
  emblem of fragility. Just visible in the top left
  corner, at the edge of the magnificently
  patterned green hanging, there is a crucifix. The
  hymnal in front of the lute is open at Martin
  Luther's hymn, 'Come Holy Ghost our souls
  inspire'. Christian faith offers hope of eternal
  life when dust returns to dust.
• Across the mosaic floor, there spreads a curious
  shape. It is a skull, skilfully distorted. it is
  the quintessential memento mori, reminder of
  mortality. In Holbein's meticulously real-seeming
  picture, the distortion functions as a signal
  that reality, as perceived by the senses, must be
  viewed correctly' to reveal its full meaning.